Vesna Bajić (Faculty of Music, Belgrade) THE ... - Ncd.matf.bg.ac.rs

82Vesna Bajićshort. Already in the 1950’s experts in the field of dance from the region of the formerYugoslavia became acquainted with the principles of Labanotation and considered thepositive and negative aspects of its possible application in the future, albeit without anydefinite results. It was not until 1990, when the subject Ethnochoreology was introducedat the Faculty of Music as part of the general studies of ethnomusicology, that thestudents were presented with the opportunity to familiarize themselves, under theguidance of Prof. Vasić, with a new kind of notation, Labanotation, which had by thenbecome standard in Europe. Up until today this system, which has been the basicstarting point in ethnochoreological works of different content and scope, has been inuse in regular studies.Labanotation uses a small number of signs that are logically placed in space andcan, according to circumstances, be supplemented or modified so as to represent themost diverse movements of man as precisely as possible.With the foundation of the Centre for studying folk dances of Serbia at the Facultyof Music, Labanotation became available to amateurs, too. As part of a seminarorganized by the Centre, courses on Labanotation are held on a regular basis and abooklet is published containing dances of a particular area written in this notation.However, Labanotation is very slowly gaining ground among choreographers, amateursof traditional dance and amateur researchers. Most of them find it unclear, abstract andunpractical which is why a safer method is still in use, namely description of the danceby words, often accompanied by individual signs. The reason behind this is inadequatetraining of the individual studying the dance and, on the other hand, the doubt whetherLabanotation can actually include every detail of the dance.The recording of dance and music is art of a particular kind and it requiresappropriate education. Unlike notating music, the recording of movements is morecomplex as dance is a temporal and spatial art. The notation of traditional dance consistsof three basic constituents of dance, these being time, space and movement. Suchtridimensionality of dance translates into linearity on paper, which is a very complexand time-consuming job. In order to achieve objectivity in the scientific sense and atonce avoid subjectivity in description by words, it is necessary to keep developing thesign system. Individual systems of notation, starting from the Janković sisters, must be“translated” into another, standard sign system such as Labanotation in order to avoidheterogeneity of individual notations. Only in this manner is the preservation of culturalheritage possible.When notating, one should consider every dance from all aspects: examine the title,area of diffusion, historical development, dance event (time and place of theperformance, participants, musical accompaniment) and record the dance pattern by thestandard system. Great attention should be paid to the recording of steps andmovements, their creation, way of transformation, variation, intertwining and dynamicand rhythmic complexities. This is fundamental to analytical work and to studyingdance units, micro- and macrostructure (motives, phrases, compositional models).With the adoption of Labanotation, Serbian ethnochoreology witnessed an increasedinterest in analytical work. Based on the recorded dances from the times of the Jankovićsisters and by transposing their notation into a new visual idiom, as well as based onsubsequent research that has continued up to the present, a systematization of the typesof dance in Serbian dance heritage took place. Today’s most diffused type of Serbianfolk dance is kolo in three, which is usually shortened to kolo among the people. Withthe work on Labanotation special attention is called to the development of the dance